


and she will become the phoenix (with a new dawn burning at the edges of her wings)

by sweetdreamsaremadeoffish



Series: in the days that follow (i will) [1]
Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: 0 to 100 real quick, Angst, Beltane, F/F, F/M, Fluff, High Priestesses, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Ladies doing Gay Shit in the name of Religious Exploration, Lilith's inner Elsa jumped out, M/M, Multi, POV and mood parkour, PSA: I Don't Know What I'm Doing, Queens, Smut, Trauma, Witches and Bitches, Zelda Spellman is a Mother, Zelda is a Dramatic Bitch, alliteration and angst, and becomes a Time Lord, because they also don't know what they're doing, bitches get schooled, featuring the snack skull, i'm tired and gay again, impulse control? never met her, in which the Queen of Hell is a cuddler, lilith's kisses are magical, oh also the aristocracy of Hell is a bunch of bitches, our poor baby's got some Dickwood PTSD, that smut order's up, there's a little self-harm, witches like their rites in 3 parts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-01-20 21:05:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18533155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetdreamsaremadeoffish/pseuds/sweetdreamsaremadeoffish
Summary: sacred sistertell me your secretsing me your sinmy bruised hands will bury it





	1. reborn in fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, here's a minor character and introspection-heavy appetizer to some Gay Shit™ and other stuff that might be kinda interesting. We’ll see.

She burns the Satanic Bible. Standing in the cemetery, where she’s cast each worn copy out of the Spellman house and drowned them in oil and clarity. She’s torn pages from one: her mother’s dogeared tome from her youth. She, Edward, and Hilda would gather round it on the parlor floor, little fingers running over the dark, intricate images as their mother recited the stories from memory. Now, she rips the few pages with mentions of Lilith from their Devilish bindings, tucks them carefully into her blazer pocket, and watches her childhood go up in flames, white smoke rolling toward the heavens.

There’s a finality to it, though it’s not the end of the infernal thing. There are still copies at the academy, in the homes of the other witches of Greendale, and across the world. All the same, she feels a chapter, perhaps even an entire book, of history is closing. Satan no longer presides over the Spellman family or their coven. Soon he’ll have lost them all.

There is no going back.

Zelda is lighter. She is without the weight of the Dark Lord for the first time in her life, and even as the new burden of High Priestess settles in its place, she knows a sort of peace.

The house should be depressing, what with the hazy fog of mourning that follows Blackwood’s treachery, but instead it’s electric. She and Ambrose managed to save a relative wealth of students, and revolution runs in their veins. They are boiling with fierce vengeance and freedom, which certainly keeps spirits high.

Between herself, Hilda, and the coven’s surviving adults, teaching continues, once they’ve established something of a routine. Just stone benches and a single slab of slate in the depths of the woods, their classroom lays under the open spring sky.

Zelda’s shocked by the sheer amount of progress they’ve made in so little time. Melvin has become hopelessly entwined in herbalism. He’s constantly at Hilda’s elbow in the kitchen, learning her sister’s secrets of brewing, both potions and stews. He’s becoming quite adept at rhyming and dicing, a model apprentice and sous chef. She can hardly stand to be near Dorcas, a sour taste still lingering in her mouth after all the hours of nauseating rehearsals. It’s petty, she knows, but the young witch has unexpectedly blossomed with Brother Lovecraft’s tutelage, rising to prominence in banishing rituals. Her sister Agatha, on the other hand, has delved further into spiritualism under Sister Radcliffe’s careful eye.

Zelda tries to keep her distance from the children. She loved teaching as Edward’s right hand, but now it only distracts her from the more pressing matters of High Priestesshood. Hilda’s managing the operation quite well anyhow. That gives her plenty of time and space to figure out what comes next, though she doesn’t really have any idea of how to go about it. Her work consists primarily of sitting on the library floor, surrounded by Satanic manuscripts, searching the shelves for scraps of Lilith’s story, usually with a glass of whiskey or gin in hand. There are no windows in the room, so she absolves herself of any shame stirred up by the time of day. Candles ring her circle of study, and it reminds her of a photographer’s dark room, light stained red as she pieces together a muddled negative to find the form of their new religion, the new covenant of the coven. Hilda keeps the children fed and erudite, the house quiet, and, most importantly, the decanters full.

Hilda has, of course, been her rock. Her sweet, reliable Hildie, warm, constant, and comforting, through all the uncertainty. She’s moved back into their room—it never stopped being theirs—with the pretense of clearing space for the multitude of young ones they’re housing. Her sister’s mortal beau has been underfoot as well, visiting after closing hours, lending a helping hand with a maddeningly saccharine smile. More often than not, Zelda will climb the stairs only to find the bedroom door locked with a charm. It’s a small price to pay really, despite the ceaseless mockery Hilda suffers for it. But her sister is happy, and those poor children have a roof over their heads. Too many have been orphaned too young by Blackwood’s brutishness. Her husband never had any elegance. Or compassion, for that matter.

She burns his sick tenants of Judas, too.

His office had goaded her from behind its doors as she scoured the academy library for anything useful, either for the students’ daily lessons or hers. Cassius is dead, so she had no one to sift through the stacks for her. Anything that looked remotely helpful she teleported back to the parlor. She had plucked some hopeful titles and tucked them into her arms, before succumbing to the irresistible pull of that accursed room.

The whole place reeked of corruption and misogyny. There was no sense in destroying it, but they would have to make some serious, foundational changes, just as with everything else. Her research led her into the heart of the old ways. Not the archaic traditions that Faustus held so very dear, but older, richer magic. The magic of the woods and the fey. The magic that forged the first witches. Eventually, they’d blow out these walls and weave the woods back into their classrooms, their lives, their craft.

But just then, she settled for blasting his doors off their hinges.

There, on his desk, were his five fetid laws, the ones he had killed her brother, her coven, for, strewn across the mahogany. She couldn’t help herself.

He has his own, wherever the heaven he is, surely. Nevertheless, it’s positively divine to watch the pages crumple, singed and helpless, in the dirt at her feet. She can’t wait to put him there.

Her nephew and his daughter are after him now, and what a pair they are. Prudence avoided her for days after the dust settled, whispering fervently to Ambrose in corners only to disappear. She held vigil at her sisters’ bedside, but whenever Zelda drew near, she melted into the shadows. Zelda knows she’s ashamed. Of how easily she was seduced by the Blackwood name, her folly in the face of her father’s horrific deeds. She knows too, that Prudence will learn to forgive herself in time. But better to let her carry out her revenge first.

Before she left, the girl swore to bring Zelda her sister, her brother, and her father’s head. That will earn wholehearted forgiveness from her High Priestess.

 

 

“Mother Spellman?”

Zelda is still unaccustomed to the address, but it also makes her bristle with pride, turning her into a great, preening wildcat. There’s something terribly succulent about finally earning the two titles she’s coveted all her life: mother and High Priestess. She glances up at the mousy girl hanging anxiously in her doorway.

“Yes, Elspeth?”

The girl looks rather lost, with her large, dark eyes and hollowed figure. Like a child’s toy, a living doll stricken by terror. “I just wanted to thank you.”

“For what?” Zelda turns a page and the sound dangles in the silence between them.

“For saving me.”

“Sabrina won’t be home until later this afternoon, but I’ll be sure to pass your gratitude along.” She ends the exchange, focused wholly on the dense volume before her, and the girl turns to go. She takes a few steps, stops, squares her shoulders, and faces Zelda once more. Her jaw is set with determination, even as her lip trembles.

“No. I’m thanking you. Sabrina- I’m grateful for what she did, of course. But she’s not…” Elspeth trails off, digging her toe into Zelda’s third favorite Persian rug. The High Priestess is not a patient woman.

“Spit it out, Elspeth.”

“She’s not the messiah,” Elspeth mutters, deeply fascinated with her own striped shoelaces. Zelda uses a feather to hold her place and shuts her book, leaning back to take in the strange, gangly child.

“What?”

“Not to say that you are-” Elspeth stumbles, obviously unprepared for this impromptu audience. “Sabrina brought us her father’s teachings. She showed us another way, gave us hope, made us question Father Blackwood and Witch Law. She’s brave and smart, and she inspired me. But she didn’t save me. You did.” She’s still not making much sense. Zelda folds her arms curiously.

“I’m told she resurrected you when the missionaries attacked.”

“That was different.” Her eyes grow even wider as she’s shocked by her own boldness, and a blush cherries her cheeks. She continues, head bowed in reverence. “I’m grateful, of course I’m grateful, but you… You were ready to lay down your life for me. She saved us because she knew she could. You didn’t have any guarantees. No miracles. Just your own magic and your heart. I’d rather stand by someone because of their strong will and steady hands than inexplicable, infernal power.”

The quiet that follows unnerves Elspeth to no end. Has she overstepped? The new order hasn’t had any chances to show its customs with, well, anything. Is she to be made an example of in another twisted system? She closes her eyes against the possibility of an oncoming blow.

But all she receives is a low, pensive hum. Peeking with one eye, she finds Zelda smiling. Or is it a smirk? She can’t be sure.

“Come with me.”

Zelda strides out of the study. Elspeth follows the click of her heels to the front door where the High Priestess is already donning her coat. She knows better than to ask any foolish questions.

Zelda’s handbag appears in the crook of her arm, and she makes her way down into the drive. Elspeth scrambles to keep up, throwing a sweater over her shoulders to ward off the March mist. The High Priestess holds her hands out to the girl and grips her wrists firmly. They speak, voices winding together and sweeping them into the wind.

“ _Ianuae magicae_.”

 

 

Dezmelda’s cottage is empty. But inside, her books stand at attention, and the two witches spend the afternoon poring over literary soldiers of matriarchy, natural wonders, and long-lost tradition. It’s the most progress Zelda’s made in weeks. Honestly, she should have thought of the valley-dweller sooner, but she’s been rather busy.

Elspeth, for what it’s worth, seems sincere in her passion, readily absorbing each ancient text Zelda throws at her. And, blessedly, she has no qualms with passing the hours in near silence. They leave the doors and windows open, and every so often the wind ruffles the thin pages between their fingertips.

As the sun is setting, Zelda leaves a scrawled note for Dezmelda, inviting her back into the coven’s fold and detailing the particular assortment of their borrowings. They’ll walk back to the mortuary and get some well-earned fresh air, the books sent along ahead of them. The graceful greenery of Moon Valley is especially entrancing in the dying light, so Zelda doesn’t anticipate the gasping shriek that flies from Elspeth’s lungs. She turns to find the girl shaking, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Bile burns in Zelda’s mouth as she stands over the corpse, Elspeth hovering fitfully at her shoulder. Dezmelda’s throat has been slit. Likely by Prudence, to prevent any further meddling from the witch after she retrieved her sister. There are maggots in the woman’s eyes, but no flies buzz about her body.

Beelzebub must be busy, perhaps disputing her Lady’s claim on Hell’s throne.

 

 

After she’s properly buried Dezmelda and returned Elspeth home—dirt-smeared and world-weary, Zelda finds herself alone in the desecrated church.

This was her sanctuary once. How little time it’s taken for her whole world to fall apart.

She won’t burn it. She won’t blast it to bits. She won’t bury it, either. The history here is too precious. They need it to serve them differently now. It will be a warning, a reminder of the danger that lurks in kneeling to a god, or—for that matter—a man one does not know.

She’ll bar its doors and leave it standing. Much as she hates even breathing the air, they need something to mark all that ends here. Lilith’s church will be somewhere else, somewhere far away from this blemished, blasphemous place. She and her people will build it with their bare hands, and when they look up they will see the stars.

It’s presumptuous, attempting to write an entirely new gospel for an entirely new goddess. She balks at the thought of creating new holidays, new customs rooted in the exploits of Lilith and, hell forbid, her own family. She has Edward’s manifesto, those few rumpled pages of the old Bible, and a bouquet of old crone’s tales to work from, but that's all. It seems preposterous to expect the other Churches of Darkness to fall in line. They’ve had more than their share of blind obedience, and Zelda means to do away with that, once she’s established her dominion. No more following in naivety or fealty in the place of freedom.

Methuselah is gone, conveniently disposed of by Hilda’s spiders, but the council and Vatican Necropolis won’t be so easily felled. They need to be ready to defend themselves and Greendale. It’s been ages since a coven really and truly revolted, but the things that were done to its witches and warlocks when they failed haunt Zelda still. This time they have the advantage of being right, but she can’t help being afraid.

There’s a battle coming, a war, more likely, and all she has on her side is the truth and a handful of broken witches. She knows that if the Church of Lilith is to triumph, it will need its High Priestess to be strong.

And it will need its Goddess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, in the spirit of Zee creating a new religion from the ground up, I’ve got a Between Chapters Challenge:  
> We’ve seen witch equivalents to Thanksgiving and Christmas. Remodel an existing holiday with new motivation and a dark twist.  
> What would witchy Easter look like?
> 
> Just something to think about for fun. Let me know what you think about this and/or the challenge!


	2. my bespoke heretic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to another chapter of me USING TOO MANY ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS to communicate wlw being fluffy, sarcastic, emotional beans.
> 
> It's kinda weird, but I feel like half the things that happen in canon are further flung (is that a thing?) than most of the things we write, so…
> 
> Enjoy?

It’s not that she’s desperate. Or lost. She’s just curious, wondering what can stay the same in their brave new world. She doesn’t need any guidance or signs. She’s not exhausted. Or weak.

Blankets line every room in the house, children and their teachers asleep side by side on the floor. Their magics intermingle and thicken the air, saturating every inhale. It’s not suffocating.

Zelda escapes through Hilda’s greenhouse, the back door sighing behind her. Her feet are bare in wet grass, the fresh scent of soil cleansing her palette of snoring roommates and night terrors.

A silk scarf falls open in her hands, and the slender dagger inside swims in the pale, pooling moonlight. The thin blade fits smooth in the center of Zelda’s palm. With a deep, shuddering breath and a silent call, she steels herself against the caustic gentleness of its sleek edge.

“What are you doing?”

Silver slips into her skin, sure to leave a scar. Her blood drips black along the shining edge and onto her toes. Hands are on her shoulders, turning her to face someone with ice in her eyes and fire on her breath.

 

 

She wakes in her bedroom. Hilda is gone, but there’s a warmth encompassing her hand. Her vision clears, and it’s Mary Wardwell, all sharp chin and cheekbones, sitting on the edge of her bed, holding her hand steady as split skin stitches into one.

“Are you-?” Her voice is hoarse. The woman’s focus doesn’t shift, fixed to Zelda’s wound, but she shakes her head. Suddenly, Zelda catches the gold mirage of her Lady’s crown. She coughs and tries to sit up straight, pillows and limbs fighting her every move.

“Peace, faithful one.” It’s quiet enough that Zelda almost doesn’t hear it, but it stills her to her bones. The Queen of Hell finishes her work soundlessly. When she’s done, she leans forward, hesitant, and kisses the mended flesh, then each of Zelda’s fingertips. She cradles Zelda’s hand in both of hers and finally meets her gaze. The witch awaited this visitation for months, envisioned it a thousand different ways, but never like this.

“How long has it been since you slept?” Reckless, she does not answer. She doesn’t have to. Lilith already knows. “You can’t protect them if you’re falling apart.”

“I can’t. The nightmares-” She stops herself. She’s not sure where that came from. Even Hilda doesn’t know about her nightmares. Well, perhaps that she has them, from all the nights she’s neglected to join her in their room and all the mornings she’s found Zelda dozing behind her newspaper, but not what they contain. Hilda doesn’t ask, and Zelda won’t tell. Ever. Somehow, she has a sinking feeling that Lilith knows about them too. She recovers. “I’m making use of it. More time to devote to you and your church, undisturbed. The house is peaceful when everyone else is asleep.”

Lilith bends so they’re face to face, nose skimming nose. “You have no reason to lie. Have no shame.” Her brow furrows, and she presses another painfully tender kiss to Zelda’s forehead. “And no more nightmares.”

Zelda pulls the bedspread up to cover the less than modest cut of her nightgown. “I take it the war in Hell is going well, then.” The demoness circles the room to stand opposite Zelda. She sits straight and tall with the best semblance of grace she can muster, but lace and violet satin aren’t terribly intimidating.

“Yes. I’ve quashed the last of the rebels, I think.” Zelda can’t help but remember her own coven’s rebellion and the forces that would destroy them with the same frigid calculation that prowls Lilith’s dismissive tone.

“What do you do to them?” she asks, allowing herself a subtle anticipatory gulp. Lilith runs her fingers across the precise patterns of Hilda’s needlework. Her sister’s crafts have continually wandered onto Zelda’s bureau since she returned to their room. Usually, she thinks of them as endearing, passive offerings, but this situation is anything but usual, and all she can think is how mortifying it is for her Goddess to believe that her first and only High Priestess favors cross-stitch.

“I eviscerate and consume them before a court of their brethren,” the woman replies, bored.

An odd tranquility settles over them then. An owl calls outside the window as Lilith peruses the bedroom with mild interest. Zelda has so many questions, but each of them twists and withers in her chest. One eventually floats to the surface and trickles off her tongue.

“Is it anything like you’d imagined? Being queen?” Lilith regards her solemnly for a moment.

“I thought Hell would be a hydra,” she says. “A creature that would fight back even after its ugly head was severed.”

“Isn’t it, in a way?” Zelda queries cautiously. “You’re the new head, borne of the old.”

“No.” Lilith shakes her head, Mary Wardwell’s hair flowing in a tempest of dark waves. “I think I’m something entirely new. A new breed of beast. Rising from the ashes of who and what I was before.”

“A phoenix,” Zelda offers with a small smile. The one Lilith returns is sad and somber. “Is something wrong?”

She grips her own elbows to solidify her resolve. “I waited so long, obeying every order, bowing down. And now it’s done. The crown is mine. All those years, I thought I was biding my time, and I was wasting it. Defeating him was so simple. A child contained him. A human child.”

“No ordinary child, my Queen,” Zelda reminds her, a tenuous attempt at comfort.

“No ordinary child indeed.” Lilith lies atop the blankets on the bed, staring up at the ceiling like one of the lifeless husks in the embalming room below. Or the slumbering witches huddled there. Zelda doesn’t allow the creeping serenity overtake them.

“I was trying to summon you.”

“I know.”

“You came.”

“I did.”

“But that’s not why.”

“No.” Lilith rolls onto her side, looking at Zelda once again. “It’s not.” She props up her head with a primly manicured fist and cuts directly to the chase. “I am Queen. The Unholy Congress of Hellspawn cannot dispute that, since I delivered their defeat. We’ve always settled political impasse with bloodshed, but the aftermath is the messy part. You are my High Priestess. My enemies would use that as their grounds for a dethroning. The aristocracy of Hell calls you my bespoke heretic.” Zelda doesn't flinch at the insult, and Lilith doesn't console her. “I’ve negotiated a concession. It’s rather archaic, but, in order to legitimize you as my earthly herald, chosen one, prophet, what have you, they’ve demanded that you undertake three ancient trials to prove your worthiness of the role,” Lilith grumbles. “Arrogant ingrates.”

Zelda raises her eyebrows. “What sort of trials?”

“Ritual tests of your devotion. To me, the maxims of unholy conduct, et cetera ad nauseam.”

“Were all Lucifer’s High Priests obliged to entertain these rites?”

“Of course not. It’s all an elaborate circus of censure and misogyny.” Lilith covers her face with a dramatic fling of her hand. “That, and they’ve balked at my consort appeal.”

“Consort appeal?” Zelda’s voice tightens, and there’s a challenge on Lilith’s face, in the curve of her mouth.

“Did I stutter, dear?”

Well, what is a witch to do with a reply like that? There’s always been a kind of gravity, an attraction like the cohesion of water, between them. Zelda thinks it’s possible her body, her soul—if she has one, knew even before Lilith revealed herself. Nothing to do, the Spellman surmises, but crush their lips together, soft and sweet as rose petals, and see what comes of it.

So she takes a chance and kisses the Queen of Hell.

It’s fluid and fragile, like they’re running into each other, watercolors bleeding on the same page. It turns fiery too fast, and suddenly it’s a race, a question of who can burrow deepest into the other before she runs out of air. Tongues and teeth and lips and hands and legs entangle around sheets until they part, both panting, with eyes hooded and hearts pounding.

“You have the final word, of course,” Lilith assures her, thumbing her lipstick from the corner of Zelda’s mouth. “It’s the path of least resistance to be sure, but I’ll find a way to circumvent their stipulations if you’re unwilling. It’s a matter of whether you’re up to playing their game. And beating them at it.”

Zelda no longer feels lost or weak. She’s invigorated, emboldened by the red stains. They are her war paint. She fills her lungs and lets her last traces of doubt vanish as she empties them. “Absolutely.”

Lilith releases a sultry hum, new marks already blooming on Zelda’s neck. “Then let the games begin.”

“Yes, my Lady,” Zelda’s close to moaning because Lilith likes to _bite_ , “But there’s something we should address first.” Lilith draws back, taming herself. Zelda bites her lip, and the demoness’ sharp little gasp punctures the air between them. She smells of brimstone and battle, perfumes of the Pit. It’s stifling and intoxicating all at once.

“You’re positively rank.”

 

 

She draws a hot bath. Her Goddess’ chuckle tumbles through the swirling steam as she divests herself of clothing and steps into the pleasantly scalding waters, Zelda watching from the doorway. Lilith fixes the witch with a playful glance, driving her into the stale stillness of the corridor, flushed and flustered. Zelda concentrates on the memories adorning the walls. A photograph of Sabrina from her fourth grade play. One of Ambrose’s sketches, accompanied by a wrinkled poem tucked into the frame.

It’s an eternity before the queen’s crooning reaches her ears, beckoning her. A siren call.

Goosebumps rattle across the plains of her exposed skin as she disrobes under Lilith’s appreciative gaze. Lilith no longer reeks of conquest, but a delicate fragrance of herbs. Zelda’s bare back settles against Lilith’s chest, and her ankles cross elegantly on the bath’s edge. Fingers card through silken coppery gold, knotting it between knuckles. Muscle and bone ripple in the soothing balm of heat, melting into one another underwater.

Afterward, linens tucked tight around them, they sit on the windowsill amongst lit candles and dribbles of wax, and Lilith runs a heavy hairbrush through Zelda’s curls. Her arms envelop the woman once she’s set it down, nuzzling the arc of her neck.

“Are you ready?”

Her Priestess tenses. The next breath is shallow and stiff. “What’s the first test?”

Mary Wardwell’s hands knead the tautness briefly. “Binding.”

A feat of skill. Zelda can manage that. If she is to perform in the realm’s arena for the honor of her queen, so mote it shall be. She crosses to the mirror and busies herself with her reflection, the tiling sending chills through her heels. Watching Lilith in the glass, she examines the lines at the corners of her eyes and smooths them with charmed flick of her wrist. “Who—or what, I suppose—am I to defeat?” Laughter like unholy church bells rings from behind her, and when she looks for Lilith, she’s nowhere to be found.

Until she’s holding her again, peppering her shoulders with searing kisses.

“It’s not that sort of trial. Undeniably, plays of strength entertain the high courts, and they do so love to be entertained. Otherwise, why would they appoint such punishments to poor Sisyphus, Atlas, and Prometheus? That will come later. In all honesty, it’s more my test than yours.” Lilith takes Zelda’s hands and leads her back to bed. “I will bind us. We will remain as such through the night and emerge in the morning.”

Something about her choice of words sets Zelda’s skin crawling. “Emerge from what, exactly?”

A sheepish smile verifies her wariness. “That’s the part you’re not going to like.”

 

 

Of all the things Zelda has ever had in her bed, this has to be the strangest. Top ten, at least.

It’s like a great, green chrysalis, large enough for both of them. It pulsates repugnantly, and the inside is _slimy_.

“You said this is more your test than mine,” Zelda ponders, biting her tongue, swallowing her objections, “What did you mean?”

Lilith is engrossed in something on the far side of the oozing mass. “Both of us must unlock our minds and welcome each other to walk amongst our memories. It’s a test of dedication and trust. There are to be no secrets between us, Priestess to Queen or lover to lover.”

Zelda wonders momentarily if demon queens from the dawn of time can be nervous. Because Lilith sounds nervous.

If she is, she hides it well, smothering her quandaries mercilessly. She deposits Zelda in the center of the putrid monstrosity and straightens into a casting stance, palms and arms raised.

She speaks not in foreign tongues but familiar ones so old only the earth has not forgotten. The spell knits the space between them, sealing them inside the cocoon. Zelda notices a faint scent of limes permeating the pod, and Lilith squeezes her hand in the dim harlequin glow.

Sonorous syllables of that language she knows and doesn’t cascade from Lilith’s lips, and she falls into a dark, dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's weird, I know. Honestly, I've just stopped questioning what my writer-brain flings at me.
> 
> Oh, also, I’m going to try to take a vote because I’m bad at making choices.  
> Show of hands: who would like a subplot?  
> Could be centered around the, y’know, actual main character of this show and the rest of “Fright Club” or I could try to write Ambrose and Prudence on their Blackwood hunt?  
> I don't know, I’m on board for whatever.
> 
> This user attributes her indecisiveness to being a Gemini. ;)


	3. cherry red, bleeding burn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, I’m sorry, officer, I don’t have my feels license on me.  
> You don’t understand, it was just supposed to be an plotless sex scene. I didn’t mean anything by it, I swear. The angst just happened. It was totally out of my control. *winks* 
> 
> **@MadamMisoncia** , you predicted the future. This chapter is shorter than the others, but it felt like it needed its own space, so the next update will be similar in length and serve as part two.  
> Chapter title from Ingrid Michaelson’s “Locked Up”.  
>    
> TW for explicit sex (pure filth, y’all) and sexual-abuse PTSD for our favorite ginger. :(  
> 

Everything is wet when the damned thing hatches. It must have crystallized during the night because when she wakes, she finds herself lying amongst scattered shards of its shell. The sun hasn’t broached the horizon yet, twilight muting the world outside.

She hasn’t awakened so peacefully in months. Her eyes flutter open, lashes grazing the night-warmed skin over Lilith’s clavicle. Her cheek rests in the valley between Lilith’s breasts, and the demoness’ arms are wrapped around her, clinging and devastatingly soggy, like her nightgown. And, Zelda notes, what Hilda would call her unmentionables.

The Queen stirs, and she clobbers any and all thoughts of her sister.

Lilith’s vision is bleary, seeds of sleep lingering. She clutches Zelda tighter and peeks cautiously from behind drooping eyelids. It’s domestic and almost comical, now Zelda knows the demoness doesn’t need sleep. Memories that don't belong to her are drifting in her mind, scenes of gardens and wastelands and Gehenna in all its hellish glory. They’re spilling into one another still, and she can feel Lilith’s presence inside her head. It should bother her.

It doesn’t.

Her own essence is seeping into Lilith’s consciousness, and she is untethered. The feeling is reminiscent of floating, and she recalls swimming in the Dead Sea as a child, suspended in saline, wondrously weightless.

Submerged in Lilith’s past, she’s startled by a fresh yearning. It nudges the outskirts of her psyche, roused by the Queen’s view of Zelda draped in royal purple and the coquettish lace of her collar that leaves little to the whims of fantasy.

Lust.

Thus far, their bondage has been mysterious, otherworldly, and largely out of Zelda’s control. She’s revelled in it, to be sure, but if her devotion is to be tested… Well, there are few things Zelda Spellman knows better than the business of sexual appetites.

Lilith observes her with a smoldering stare as she extracts herself from their embrace.

“May I, Your Unholy Majesty?”

Her Queen grins.

Mindful to keep her eyes lowered, she tugs Lilith to the edge of the bed, spreads her legs, and kneels. The demon above her growls aloud at the first light lick, spine arching into each miniscule ministration helplessly.

Zelda devours her.

Lilith claws at Zelda’s hair, mussing it until it’s ragged and sprawled, wild, the woman below her thoroughly and marvelously debauched. As she shudders, her glamor flickers, and the thighs over Zelda’s shoulders sallow and stretch. She dares not look up.

The demoness, sovereign of Hell, first among the fairest sex, has no higher power to praise in her ascension, so she cries out for Zelda. The word is like bone between her teeth, and for the first time since the Garden, howling her lover’s name, Lilith is sated.

An inky rush meets Zelda’s lips, tasting of blackberries and sin.

Her convulsions cease, and she collapses onto to the mattress. Zelda crawls back up onto the bed, straddling one of Lilith’s knees and kissing her soundly, sealing her work. Her own arousal has rendered her undergarments sodden, and the slickness against Lilith’s skin only heightens her delirious cravings.

She pins Zelda to the extravagant cushions and liberates her from the cut of her negligee with a single, serrated tooth. The expensive fabric is in ribbons when Lilith is through.

Zelda’s Queen looms resplendent above, but something sharp wrenches within her, and she’s trapped in an abyss of harrowing remembrances. Nightmares painted red in brutish ways rather than delicious ones. Horrors of another honeymoon, and she can’t _breathe_.

The untamed heat in the room disappears, and Lilith freezes. Then, she jolts into action, swiftly dismounting her lover and sweeping her into the calm cradle of her arms. Soon, the place where Zelda buries her face is damp with tears, and the witch herself is desperately muffling her sobs. Lilith has seen all manner of atrocities and knows thousands of languages, dead and living—more, now she’s traversed the recesses of Zelda’s mind—but seeing the woman she loves so wholly ruined is what leaves her speechless.

“Make me forget,” Zelda whimpers eventually, after the sobbing subsides, lifting her bloodshot eyes to Lilith’s. “Erase him. Please.”

Lilith blanches. “Are you sure?”

Zelda nods, dashing the tears from her cheeks. Halting, Lilith lifts her hands to Zelda’s temples. But the witch catches her wrists, shaking her head, and pillowing her face in Lilith’s palms.

“No, not that, just-” Zelda closes her eyes. “Burn his marks away. Make me yours, instead.”

She understands then, and dives into the shadows of Zelda’s senses, searching for the blistering bruises Blackwood left in his wake.

Slowly, she lays Zelda atop her. An arm comes to rest loosely across her chest, steadying her as Lilith’s other hand journeys toward the witch’s core. She laves her tongue along the echoes of lashings on her back and fondles her coarse ginger curls. The memories bleed together as everything his callous hands and draconian talons ever defiled is purified by tender touches and perfect pleasure.

Three of Lilith’s fingers push inside her, pulling her tight as a drawn bowstring, and she’s shot into palpitating, rapturous euphoria, shredding the heart-rending recollections of Faustus’ cruelty.

After she comes down, Zelda reaches for her Goddess. “Let me-”

“Shh,” Lilith hushes her with a glistening thumb along the witch’s lower lip. “There’s no need. You’ve worshipped enough, darling.”

She descends, dragging herself down Zelda’s body and burying her mouth in the molten grotto between Zelda’s creamy thighs.

There’s something to be said for ruling the kingdoms of Hell, but privately, her chin soaked with Zelda’s passion, Lilith thinks the sloping swells of the witch’s hips are similarly priceless territory.

They’re outdone only by the moans of ecstasy that struggle and strain to stay in her lungs. She’s trying to hold them back, to keep quiet. Her whole coven, her family, is under this roof, and they need a fearless leader, not a mewling sex kitten. Lilith suckles at her clit with prehistoric, primal expertise until she can’t bother with the state of her reputation or stifle her screams. When she comes, it’s blinding, her entire body thrashing with its undiluted intensity.

Once her bliss fades, Zelda’s mind clears, dewy sweat cooling with the relief of release, utterly spent by the most exquisite orgasm in all her centuries of living. Every sinew of the witch’s body yawns with gratitude and affection for the other woman in her bed.

Drained, she nestles into her lover’s sweat-drenched side.

Throat still raw and half asleep, Zelda rasps, “Was that one of my trials as well?” Lilith parts her quivering legs, dousing Mary Wardwell’s lithe fingers in the witch’s liquid veneration and bringing them to her mouth, demure and wicked all at once.

“No, dearest,” she murmurs, “I believe that was the first of your triumphs.”

Dazedly victorious, Zelda shelters herself in sleep, and the Queen of Hell vanishes, dissolving as the first light of dawn streaks the sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to hell, yes, but, I mean, as long as I get to hang with our queen, I'm fine with it?
> 
> I was brainstorming on the Blackwood Hunt subplot… and it became more than a subplot because your girl found out there's, like, 2 Ambrence (someone pls tell me if that's not the name, I just kinda trusted my gut) fics.
> 
> Soo, I'm gonna write it as a companion piece, instead. Same universe, same timeframe, but from different perspectives.  
> (And maybe after that's done, a third based on Hilda/Dr.Cee, because that ship is darn cute and deserves more content. Idk, I shouldn't get ahead of myself.)
> 
> Let me know if that’s okay?


	4. some sweet sordid song

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluff atonement was supposed to happen in this chapter, but I’m not sure that it did. I don’t know, what do y’all think?

She gilds the sun and smoke surrounding her with darkened glasses and gold. The events of the night before were far more gripping than anything in her newspaper. Sitting on the front porch with a lit cigarette, she allows every salacious detail to crash over her, safely sequestered behind cat-eyed frames.

A crunch shatters her revery. Absinthe eyes fly open, defensive at her discovery.

Lilith perches on the balustrade, her legs laid in Zelda’s lap. She’s munching on an apple with those pearly fangs that do not belong in Mary Wardwell’s mouth, a solitary rivulet of the fruit’s juice running down her chin.

“I thought you’d gone.” Her newspaper becomes interesting again, and she snaps it open, providing herself a momentary respite.

“I had some errands that needed tending to,” Lilith replies. A few more merciless bites, and she lobs the apple’s core into the woods.

It’s odd to speak so casually with a Goddess, her Goddess, but Zelda reasons that it would be more so to prostrate herself before this creature whose dreams she’s treaded and terrors she’s tempered. This woman she has known so intimately, in body and spirit.

Lilith examines her, as if the sight of her High Priestess in sunlight is a revelation. Falsely docile, Zelda skims a story about an economic crisis in a tiny European country whose name she’s already forgotten three paragraphs in and doesn’t deign to review while under her Queen’s scrutiny.

And again, interruption.

The front door slams, and someone around the corner mutters to the cheerful jingling of keys. Zelda bites back an irritated grunt. It has to be her sister, leaving for work at that blasted shop.

Hilda scurries to the car, hefting her costume’s unwieldy skirt along behind her. She shuts the door and subtly rolls down her window, checking on her makeup, sister, and wig in the side mirror.

She notes Lilith’s presence. Mary Wardwell has come by once in a while, but Hilda’s learned quickly that she’d _never_ wear anything like the short, cerulean number Lilith is sporting as a second skin. Or third, she muses. Yes, a third skin would be more accurate.

The sudden need to reapply her lipstick is the perfect excuse to eavesdrop.

On the porch, Lilith snatches Zelda’s cigarette. “Stop that.”

“Excuse me?” Her sister’s voice is dangerously rigid.

The Queen of Hell takes no heed of Zelda’s festering fury, luxuriating in a long drag from her stolen prize. She blows turbid rings across the yard.

“I’ve endured smoke from the fires of Hell for longer than the Spellmans have breathed air. Hardly affects me anymore, and I can’t have anything blackening my favorite lungs.”

Her sister’s eyes narrow, and she goes for her pocket, but Lilith just clears her throat, shaking her head. The expression on Zelda’s face then, as she notices the other woman’s vermillion nails rapping lightly on the purloined pack, is one Hilda knows all too well:

Murder.

Hilda winces, wholeheartedly expecting her to instigate another religious coup, to forsake another god.

But she just hears her sister sigh, annoyed. “Fine.”

Hilda overcomes her shock and starts the car abruptly, the rumbling of the engine pressing against the tension in the air.

The hearse trundles backwards, away down the lane and out of sight. Hildie thinks she’s so shrewd as if Zelda wouldn’t recognize her own baby sister’s spying. Honestly.

Lilith’s shoes clatter to the floor as she stubs out their shared cigarette on the side of the house. A bare foot trails over Zelda’s bicep.

“You’re still here.”

“I’m shopping,” Lilith says dryly, stroking slender toes along Zelda’s wrist. The witch folds her paper. There’s no use it hiding behind it now.

“For?”

“Real estate.” Zelda eyes the demoness over the tops of her glasses. “I’m making Greendale my earthly seat of power,” Lilith tells her, circling her ankle, its crackling muted by a mirage of mortality.

“What about Rome?” The crux of all Churches of Darkness. Zelda had hoped she might change them, someday. Or, rule them. “The Vatican Necropolis?”

“Well, my High Priestess is here.” The title pleases her, and her Queen carries on. “Anyway, it’s time we stopped defining ourselves by the shadows of the False God’s Church, my dear. Lucifer was a pedantic, spiteful bigot, and I refuse to build my empire on his terms or anyone else’s.”

Zelda hums in agreement. “As do I. No course but ours from now on.”

She doesn’t sound as sure as she should.

“But you have your reservations.” It isn’t a question, but Zelda’s answer is a vehement denial. She rips off her glasses, and there’s a flash of something like fear in her eyes.

“No! No, I just…” She’s too careful. “There’s so much to be done and-”

“You don’t have to have all the answers, Zelda.” Comfort and guidance have never been Lilith’s forte, but everything is changing now. She has people who need her, and she’ll need practice. “And you may ask anything of me.”

Zelda fidgets, and the demoness feels her phantom itch between her fingers, between her lips. She can’t tell if it’s addiction or apprehension that’s augmented that pull. Worry settles in the place where there once was a rib.

When she speaks, the words wobble from the grated fathoms of her throat.

“His Book is still sealed inside the desecrated church.” It’s like a confession, Zelda’s head bent in contrition, and Lilith hates it. “I wasn’t sure what to do with it. There’s no simple escape. We’ll have to choose true freedom or power. We can’t have both.” She’s tentative, wary of retribution for innocent ignorance.

Lilith definitely hates it.

“The Devil told you lies.” Lilith tells her, taking Zelda’s hands and kissing her wavering brow, the crown of her head. Then, she glides across the porch to stand opposite her Priestess, arms folded. Zelda listens like a child. “The book is a talisman. Charged with centuries of darkness, yes, but at its core it’s a charm. A symbol, the record, of witchkind’s chains. It holds no divine authority. Remember, he was never a god. He merely manipulated witches, harnessed your magic and will until you forgot what was yours from the start. I bear that fault. I was the first he blinded. He told me he’d always win, so I made myself his warrior, instead of my own.” She shakes him from her shoulders with a rancorous scoff. “Even his mark, the pentacle, thieved from the Earth itself. His grimoire’s power derives from your belief in it, nothing more.”

“Lilith.” The witch is timid, another question sore under her skin. “Were we fools?”

“No,” she says. “We were human.”

Zelda doesn't look so daunted then, as the morning mist breaks for the day to begin in earnest, and Lilith stoops to kiss her hand in farewell. “I’ll return tonight to collect you for the second trial.”

“I assume it will take place outside my bedroom,” her lover retorts.

“Yes.” She pauses on the stairs. “You’ll want to dress well.”

“Where exactly are you taking me?” Zelda asks, replacing her glasses on the trim bridge of her nose. Lilith tosses the rascal response behind her.

“Why, hell, my love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter update, as I said, but I’ll be back to normal-length chapters next time.  
> Oh, also, I just got a tumblr? Come over to **@claire-de-macarune** and help me figure out how the tumblr-verse works or just chat, if you like. Seriously, I need all the help I can get.
> 
> See you in hell! (Or, y’know, the comments section, if you’re inclined to be so kind.) 😉


	5. take me down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is straight—well, gay—fluff and Zee being a mom. So, Happy Mother’s Day!
> 
> (Chapter title from my friend Carrie Manolakos’ song of the same name. Check it out, if you like, she’s fantastic! Available on Spotify, etc. ❤)
> 
> Disclaimer: I know less about Riverdale than Zelda does.

In Ambrose’s absence, Zelda’s work has overtaken the embalming room. Well, the little office off of it, at any rate.

Her own study is for research, a library that needs sifting and sorting through. Unfortunately, the mortuary records take up desk and shelf space, impeding much else of substance. This little alcove is where she compiles her meaningful findings into the Lilithian Bible’s first incarnation after frequent trips there to borrow Ambrose’s tools proved too strenuous for her knees and back. Age seasons her, certainly, but she _is_ aging.

He wouldn’t miss it while on his blood quest, so she set about decluttering. Those endeavors came to a gruesome end when she opened a cabinet and sent an impressive assortment of pornographic magazines sprawling across the floor. After that, she enchanted every cupboard and drawer, folding her nephew’s belongings into alternate ethereal pockets, out of sight and out of mind, praise Lilith. She’ll be the last to begrudge Ambrose his carnal needs or, hell forbid, preach boundary enforcement when it comes to business and pleasure. She will, however, defend his privacy and her ignorance. Passionately so.

She’s there now, packing her manuscript for the coming journey. She wonders if there’s a library in Hell.

“Lady Blackwood.”

Zelda’s lip curls at the name, and she swivels in her chair, ready to strike.

It’s Prudence. She relaxes.

“I am no Blackwood, my dear.” The girl’s projection bows, and Zelda notes a tear in the seam of her dress, runs in her stockings, a cut on her cheek.

“Of course. Forgive me, Mother Spellman,” Prudence rushes. “Nor am I.”

So she’s learned.

She’s known Prudence since the Church of Night took her in—she was the first witch the High Priest summoned, in those days, to manage crises with children—but this is the first time she’s seen how much she’s grown.

“Are you safe? Your body, I mean.”

“So long as your nephew gives me no reason to doubt his competence.” Zelda enjoys Prudence’s wit, her wildness. Perhaps because she sees so much of herself in the girl.

“I assume you’ve come with news of the hunt.”

“Yes,” Prudence picks at her nails. “We’ve found him. My father.”

His little dancer swirls Zelda’s thoughts, spinning. She shields her wrist from her pupil and pinches it. The little dancer stumbles, and her ankle gives a satisfying snap.

“Well, that didn’t take long,” Zelda purrs. “He never was creative, the bastard.”

“We’re staking out his camp. I’ve come for your order, Priestess. What is the will of our Queen?”

“What do you think, child?”

The girl nods, fixated on the gritty tile under her pointed black boots. She looks up after a moment, eyes like moonlit pools after midnight. “Would you have killed me?”

She can only be asking about that day in her father’s office. No one is quick to forget steel against a panicked pulse. “No.”

“Why not? I was a traitor to my people.”

“For want of your father’s love,” Zelda qualifies. “I’ve learned to know my true enemy.”

“I swore I’d bring him to his knees for you.” She knows Prudence’s ferocity is part revenge, part penance. But none of them were themselves then, and Zelda knows a thing or two about being under Faustus’ spell. The child is begging for forgiveness that’s already been bestowed a hundred times.

“You did.” It’s her responsibility to keep giving it, to guide and guard the flock. Her flock. “And you will. I believe in you.”

Twin pools threaten to flood, and a sparrow chirps as it lights on the stem of Zelda’s lamp. The psychopomps know her well by now. She strokes its infernal feathers with a crooked finger, and it sings a sweeter song than the haunting echoes in her head.

Prudence stares, somewhere between horror and awe. “I should go.”

“Yes, you should. My best to Ambrose, and Lilith be with you both.”

“I’ll tell him, Mother Spellman.” She prepares for her return to reality, growing fuzzy.

“Prudence.” The girl resolves. “You’ve been very brave,” Zelda says like wins through the woods. “You’d make a marvelous High Priestess one day.”

It could be a tear or a phantom that crosses Prudence’s face then, she can’t be sure. A solemn sort of understanding passes between them. A childless mother and a motherless child.

“Thank you, Mother.” She vanishes then, and Zelda knows her farewell was spoken with secular honor. The thought warms her until dark.

 

 

Sweetwater River runs like ribbons of coal, sunlight diamonds shining on its surface. They walk along the stony bank and onto a ragged outcropping, a weeping willow’s feathery branches caressing the water like a wistful lover.

A soft summoning spell from Lilith and bones come forth, lashing together into a macabre rowboat. Zelda’s heard about strange happenings across the river, but unless they’re brought to her mortuary, she refrains from inquiry on the whereabouts of the bodies. Which have, apparently, quite piled up.

Her dress is a sheath of sable and scarlet silk, and she feels like a High Priestess of Darkness much as she looks the part. Lilith steps into their vulgar vessel and turns to help Zelda in.

Somehow, she’s miscalculated, knocked off balance by the wind or the water or her Dark Lady’s wily wink. Whatever the cause, she falls, catching Lilith’s hand as she does. Skirts slash and shred.

She pins her Queen to the skeletal floor, rusted locks casting flaming shadows as the light filters through. She wonders if this is what Hell will be like, everything ablaze.

Lilith’s view puts the dawn of time to shame.

Rain deluges grey from the heavens, and the force of their laughter shoves them from shore. The river rages around them, and Zelda lowers herself into both the basin of the boat and Lilith’s embrace, femoral oars creaking with the current. Their raft swirls at the river’s center, rapids turning to molasses as the Mother of Demons parts the waters. An ethereal whirlpool writhes on the riverbed, a portal, rabid, ruthless, and red. They help each other stand and peer over the edge.

Hell.

This was never how Zelda imagined she’d arrive; dead, begging and broken on her knees for a jealous, vengeful Lord. Instead, she’s on the arm of a new queen, living, a crux of a bloody, cold-blooded coup.

This is so much better.

Her dress is destroyed—torn to pieces by cleaving gales from the Pit, rain like bullets, and grasping bones—but her lover’s humming at the back of her mind and interlaced hand soothe her. Fabric frays and falls.

“I’m always invigorated by the rain,” Lilith sighs, face like a sunflower, upturned to soak in the squall. “Every drop, a new beginning.”

Zelda lays her head on the goddess’ shoulder. “It always feels like an end to me. Clouds capturing the sun.”

Then they’re nose to nose, Lilith captures her lips, and maybe good can come from darkness overtaking light.

They jump together.

 

 

Hell is a desert, vast and stained red by oceans of mortal blood. The rivers are trails of black glass, and the sky is citric.

Two witches wander toward towering demon cities and the Palace of Darkness in the distance, a crystal bluff painted in pitch.

Alone, Lilith is no God. She’s not a fallen angel, some celestial being without bounds or truth. No, she was human: flesh and bone and blood without escape. She was mortal once upon another time.

But now, she feels different. Under the guise of Mary Wardwell—which she keeps for the benefit of Zelda and her vanity—her own form is shifting, blossoming with the tigress of Zelda’s nurture. Walls inside her are crumbling as her queendom erects new ones, restoring Gehenna after the war.

When she resurrected her palace, she had no need of spoken spells. The power of intention whipped her magic to dazzling heights, and watching it take shape, she could hear her Priestess’ voice, singing some ancient lullaby that dredged up fragments of Lilith’s soul. Her own search for them was grievously fruitless.

Demon magic has always been feral, but hers was never so impossibly strong.

The second trial is a ball, all the aristocracy of the Pit gathering to air their scruples about their new High Priestess. And Zelda will be their Priestess.

There’d been backlash from the first filing of the appeal.

Nyx—one of her eldest daughters, first among the Lilim—was her lieutenant. One of her earliest convictions as Queen of Hell was that her governing body be that of a woman.

Once the court had given up their pursuit of the crown, she’d declared Zelda her choice of consort immediately. Another staunch conviction. She would have no one else.

When Nyx had asked her why, wearing a shawl of shadows like armor, she hadn’t hesitated.

“I love her.”

Nyx was horrified.

“Surely you know we don’t do that, Mother.”

“I am your Queen,” Lilith snarled. “We will do what I say we do.”

“Of course, my Lady.” The demon had wrung her hands and remedied her insolence with haste. “But Hell is no place for love.”

She regarded her daughter, melancholic. “Truly, isn’t it the only place?”

She sends Zelda to the Seamstress.

Or rather, the pin-cushion of a creature with eyes sewn shut and embroidered skin senses her plight and arrives of her own unsolicited accord. In her six arms, she carries bolts of demoncloth—woven with the fine hair of angels Lilith and her children have scalped over the millennia.

“How does it look?” Zelda asks the Seamstress, from around a glacial corner.

“Ravishing, Madam Spellman.” Lilith slinks into the forested atrium, hands behind her back. “As do you.” Zelda scoffs at the flattery that has crumbled civilizations.

“The dress isn’t even on yet.” She’s standing on the Seamstress’ mirror-ringed dais, the long white slip at her waist matching embellished corsetry. Her bosom bubbles from the sweeping cut. Bats flutter around her, hemming as large spiders sew her into the gown. She’s a scrumptious display.

“Oh, then do have the Seamstress leave us.” Lilith hears the monster grumble, but she goes, leaving her helpers behind to finish the design she’s been preparing for centuries. The Seamstress is one of the few ancient Pit-beast who saw this change in regime coming, her clairvoyance surpassed only by her artistry. She knows Lilith is grateful for both her support and her eye.

Zelda twirls for her and trips on her own train. Her body seems to have forgotten its reputation for enviable grace. Lilith considers herself blessed in witnessing these little moments of the Spellman’s instability and is always there to catch her. They sit side by side on her pedestal.

“I don’t want to let you down,” Zelda breathes, gazing out into the subterranean jungle. She wonders how the vegetation grows here with no sun.

Lilith smiles. “You could never. Besides, you’ve already proven yourself to me. Nothing else matters.”

Her descendents compose the court for the most part. Her own grandchildren stand against her in this.

She should incinerate the bastards. Pathetic worms.

Instead, she unfurls her hands, her gift lying there like a childhood memory.

“For you,” she explains, placing it in Zelda’s copper curls. “I’d meant to give it to you tonight, but I think you need it now.”

Zelda squints at her and replies endearingly. “It’s lovely, darling, but I don’t think a clover crown will be recognized in the court.” Lilith shakes her head.

“Look,” she whispers, jutting Mary Wardwell’s chin at the circle of mirrors.

Zelda looks. The mirrors in Hell are tricksters, but she’s clear now. The white and purple flowers have given way to jewels, morphing into a sparkling diadem in her hair.

Her own crown.

“It’s from the fields of Asphodel.” Lilith’s voice is muddled by the glass around and above them. “I’ve already chosen you, remember? This is their game, not mine.” The Queen of Hell cups her lover’s cheek in the palm of her illusion. “The earth herself has already crowned you her champion.”

Hell’s bells ring out, horns heralding the beginning of the second trial, and Zelda is alone in the palace atrium, save the bats, the spiders, and the aftermath of her Queen’s hand and heart like a newfound soul aflame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you had fun, I'll just be over here melting, so comment your state of matter/consistency?
> 
> I have tests and projects and exams (oh my!) so I'm not sure if I'll be able to update next weekend. Wish me luck (i will need it, ahhh)!


	6. yours to keep, yours to lose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember that time when I said I would be too busy this week to update? *nervous laughter*
> 
> Well this happened instead.

Demons dance across the ballroom, indulgent, brocaded luxuries agitating viscous carmine as it streams viciously between feet, hooves, tentacles, and spurs in little bellicose cyclones.

Lilith looks on from the throne of skulls. The grotesque, elongated spires of her crown reaching for the vaulted dome above like some perverted cathedral. Choruses of oracles croon prophecies from stately balconies. Whirling burgundy vapors converge into wisps of wine and ascend her frame,—half mortal, half mirage—blooming over her like the geraniums in Hilda Spellman’s garden. Hellfire spirals lofty onyx columns to illuminate the grand Halls of Hell.

Chamber doors, hewn from lead and iron, creak open, slamming against glittering walls and revealing her guest of honor.

Swathed in white, another fallen angel, the High Priestess’ amber tresses cascade down her frosted spine in a magmatic waterfall, her crown sequestered amongst them like a secret.

And Lilith thought she was the goddess between them.

Nyx gathers her shadows and her breath as Zelda flows like pearlescent ocean surf toward the Queen. The gown has to be made of moonlight,—nothing else could glow so sweet and still so cold—and it must be sewn with threads of time, since even the music sweeps into her step, swimming languidly rather than rushing past. Murk parts before her, skirt slicing through the bloody mist like a white-hot scythe of souls.

The cavorting crowd parts too, masked in painted china and malignance. Jeering degrades her from all sides, slander scorning the Spellmans until the end of days. Deadly tails and scales slither beneath her, around her, but she keeps her gaze upon her Queen. They will learn, and she will flout unholy convention until they do. Even when she hears them lay curses on her beloved brother.

Arriving at her lover’s altar sends a wave of hush over the assembled hellspawn. Zelda curtsies like an avalanche, snow sprinkling from her bared shoulders. They are not predator and prey, but the Queen’s mouth waters all the same.

She pulls the witch to her feet and consumes her in a kiss, tangoing insatiable with Zelda’s tongue. The ball and court and games wane into Zelda’s opal fullness. Hands like lilies tug them apart, if only to keep the other woman from tunneling inside her skin. Lilith seizes the witch’s lower lip, engulfing it between her own.

“You are absolutely wicked!” Mirth distorts the breath of reprimand, close enough to scrape the surface of her deception. The demoness nips away, leaving behind a pin-prick peck at the peak of Zelda’s nose.

“As if you’d want me any other way,” she teases as their hands become a plait of power, and they face the assortment of stares that is their audience. “Shall we dance?”

The first strains of the Mephisto Waltz squirm through the fog. Tradition holds true as on Earth. They’ve sealed their bond, but this its presentation, the debut of their union, and Zelda refuses to ruin it with obsolete fear. They’re safe, free forces now.

Ruffles and taffeta ripple until the mass of demons orbits them as twin stars, circling one another in a field of muddled poppies. The budding clouds creep under Zelda’s dress, scaling the witch’s legs until they’re blooming across the wintry meadows of her thighs.

“Cheeky.” Her voice licks into the shell of Lilith’s ear, a seeping, sensual syrup as they sway.

And then everything smashes to smithereens.

Rumbling plagues of rats split the red seas and clamber to cover the throne in gelatinous grease. Asmodeus slouches in the Queen’s seat, vermin swarming to engross the unholy altar. Lilith fumbles her glamor, but Zelda pays it no mind, already in battle-stance, back to back with her first and only ally.

Three other intruders occupy the hall. One at the grand entrance, eyes bursting from warped sockets. One languishing on the banquet table, dishes and goblets wrought by dwarfs crashing to the ebony floor. One terrorizing their ignobles, gleeful and gaunt.

“Careful now, Lilith,” Asmodeus placates, the damned beast watching her watching him. “Naughty girls don’t get to play with pretty toys.” He fondles the skull at his left talon. “The terms of our surrender were quite clear, my dear, and you seem to have violated them.”

“And you have violated my Priestess’ revelry, fiend. Begone.” Lilith barks.

He has a filthy claw at Zelda’s throat then. “Much as I’ve enjoyed the festivities and would doubtless enjoy plunging _deeper_ into them,” he drawls, pining for the witch’s unwilling body and submission, “We had a deal.”

“No.” Lilith suppresses the initial impulse to disembowel him. “You had demands.”

“Of the seven princes of hell, four remain. The rest slaughtered at your hands, Mother of Demons. We urge you to keep your promises. The witch does not and will never belong here.”

The court stands silent. Lot of good being their mother does her now. Deserters.

But there’s a way with these things, an etiquette they must follow. Nothing can jeopardize her hold on the throne.

“How dare you?” she shouts, proving too human for it, brazen with acrimony and adrenaline, and spitting in the demon’s face. “She is your Queen!”

Asmodeus grimaces. “A feisty little animal, isn’t she, Lilith? Twice the arrogance and entitlement of her brother. I expected it, what with rearing the halfbreed.” Zelda surges forward, defending her family’s honor with her dagger to his chest.

“I told you so,” the demon grins, unfazed, still addressing the sovereign over her shoulder. “Disgrace.”

“Say it again,” Zelda dares him, digging with the blade.

“You forget your place, Spellman!” Lilith hisses, grip harsh on her lover’s forearm. The witch recoils, stung.

Her weapon slows as it falls, and the ballroom freezes, the princes evicted to the tomb of the dungeon. Time passes differently in the Pit, and Lilith has found it amongst the things she suddenly has power over. But her magic shrinks then, its purpose fulfilled, immediate danger alleviated, and the source severed as Zelda breaks from her, fuming.

“I was led me to believe my place was at your side, not your feet.” Zelda invites explanation once she’s recovered from the frenzy, her voice cutting through icy air. For an instant, she could swear Mary Wardwell’s whispering blue eyes turn pitch black, but her Goddess makes no effort to justify herself. “I see. Then it shall be as you wish, mistress.”

Verbal embers burn Lilith’s mouth, and to her mounting horror, Zelda sinks to the floor like an unholy ark, shipwrecked and unsalvageable, in worship.

Poison bleeds into her lover’s voice, deadly arsenic welling between the melodious notes of each biting word. “As you once served Satan, so will I serve you.”

“No-”

Zelda’s eyes send a chill through her, but in them there is hellfire, and her heart stops to join time.

“Praise Lilith.”

The full warm, weight of security that’s fueled the furnaces of her core since they first walked hand in hand—through dreams, along the river—is gone, a desperate hunger left in its wake. She knows it all too well, and she hates the way it eats at her, hollowing her strength. The court stares with sightless eyes, caught between breaths, even the roiling cardinal fog suspended in her spell. She’s always been good at holding things in place, whether it’s someone else’s chains or her own.

“Zelda, please…” She doesn’t know what she’s asking for, undone by fear. It’s all she can do to meet the witch’s eyes. What can she do now? How does she rescue this treasure before it’s swallowed up in the briny depths of despair?

Zelda’s hands clench into fists, her fingernails digging crescents into her palms, tiny blood moons reminding Lilith of simpler, lonelier days she’d rather die than relive.

The thought brings her to her knees.

 

 

Zelda passes the second trial.

Her fire pleases the court, her utter disregard for customs when her family is threatened. Evil-doers, demons, beasts as they are, they admire her tenacity. Hellishly beyond decorum, she hears a snarl of acceptance from the shadows.

They are a covetous bunch of cretins.

Her feet are bare, like spilt milk on black, and she’s wary of the contrast.

“I know you’re there.”

Lilith leaks from a dark corner and tries to apologize again, but Zelda just shakes her head.

She beckons the demoness into her open arms, but there’s more that needs to be said. Things she needs to say. “I wasn’t just defending my brother today. Or my niece. I was defending you.” The confession is like caramel on two tongues.

“You don’t have to protect me.”

“I know.” They lay down together in the bedchamber where Zelda had awaited her fate, and long ago, Psyche insisted upon seeing the face of her husband, Eros. “But family comes first, and that’s what you are now.”

Something that sparkles like a shooting star slips down Lilith’s cheek and onto her pillow. “Really?”

“Yes.” Zelda kisses her, and she prays it never stops feeling like this. She still doesn’t quite believe it, this takeover that’s pure whiplash and glory. She’s never had something that was hers, truly hers, and now she has everything. Well, everything that matters anyway.

“Praise every celestial miracle that gave me you,” she blurts, and Zelda blushes, and that’s a phenomenon she’ll never quite pin down. So she pins Zelda to the mattress instead. “I would give it all up, the crown, the hordes of Hell, anything and everything if you asked. I just want you.”

Because that’s her devotion. Sacrifice proves her sincerity, no matter how much it frightens her. The scariest part is that it’s true. A word from Zelda is all it would take, and she’s beginning to see that the princes and court and Nyx might be right. Maybe love is a weakness she can’t afford.

“Stop.” Zelda feels Lilith’s mind speed past, a breeze inside her head. “I would never ask that of you. We have nothing to prove to each other or anyone else. Isn’t that what you’ve been saying from the start?”

Lilith nods, and there are meteors bright on her face, sterling tears sailing by.

At some point, she buries the light show, straddling Zelda and showering the swanning of her neck with dripping asteroids. Their extravagant robes are long gone, and Lilith follows the flight of her fingers in sacred southern migration.

But her lover stalls her with a soft, peaceful protest. “Not tonight.”

The witch is patient and serene, laid back in fillagreed plush. She searches Zelda’s face for a sign, careful questions mired in her eyes.

“Let’s just _be_ tonight.”

Another mystery to solve.

Lilith doesn’t understand why but cedes to Zelda’s wishes all the same. She snuggles into the downy mound of her lover’s stomach, taking refuge in the pillows of her hips and veiling fair thighs with an immensity of tawny locks.

If Zelda is a mountain, Lilith is the sea, and she winds her arms tight around Zelda’s legs, hoping to hold on through the most turbulent of tides and times.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ewww, right? Come yell at me about this swiss-cheesy mess.


	7. i will love you from a lonely throne

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finale not-quite-ultimo, my friends! Let’s do this!

Ironically, ice blankets Hell at night.

Lilith wakes with her bed glaringly empty of ginger witches and cold stealing into the room. The doors to the veranda are open. She rises, bundling herself in a gauzy maroon dressing gown and a cape fashioned from hellhound pelts, the chill clearing her head of sleep.

Zelda stands at the edge of the terrace, gazing at the snow-covered view and polar horizon. The Nether Borealis light her dainty features in a spectrum of pastel fantasies.

“There aren’t any stars here. I’d never thought of that,” Zelda says, sensing her lover’s presence.

Lilith wraps Zelda in her cloak and pulls their bodies flush against one another within the lavish furs. “You’re freezing.”

They’re close enough now she can make out the details of Zelda’s dress in the gloom, olive green vines winding up filmy fabric and to collar her abalone neck. Evidently, the Seamstress has made her more than one dress. That must mean the future is in their favor; Zelda Spellman will visit Hell again.

“Go home, Zelda.” Jade locks to turquoise as she slinks her arms around the witch’s waist.

“What’s the final test?”

Lilith rolls her eyes to mask avoidance. “It’s rather boorish. And unnecessary.” Zelda will have none of her obfuscation.

“What is it?”

Lilith parts from her and their cozy den. “The Bearing,” she sighs, “Bearing the progeny of your god is the ultimate consummation of devotion.”

She’s surprised at what her Priestess asks next.

“Did The Dark-” she stutters, breaking old habits. “Did Lucifer make you-?”

Lilith’s laugh is joyless. “Of course he did. How do you think I became Mother of Demons?”

Zelda looks out over the metropolis of purgatory. Every distant flare is a hellion. “How many of them are yours?”

“All of them,” Lilith tells her, gravitating back into their haven, warmed by Zelda’s pulse. “In some way or another.”

The witch receives her lover with a firm protectiveness. Lilith makes her feel so young. She forgets too easily how old and tired her Queen must be.

“But don’t let it trouble you. I refused entertain that notion with the court from the outset.”

“You doubt my piety?” She will do it, if need be. Whatever she must face, whatever she must overcome for the right to remain at her Queen’s right hand, she’ll do it without complaint or resistance.

“New Goddess, new rules, my sweet Zelda,” Lilith appeases. “I crave your love and loyalty, which you’ve already given. Freely. I have no need of your submission. I will not build our future on your back. So I’ve devised an alternative challenge.” Ever questioning, Zelda’s expression begs further exposition.

“You will bear my soul instead.” She had uncovered and repaired it, after all. “Bear my heart in your chest, let it rest against yours. Be my knight, my beloved. Be the keeper of all that remains mortal in me. You will be the fortress of strength that guards my last weaknesses.” Her Priestess has been incredibly quiet throughout her proposal, and Lilith’s core churns, almost anxious. It’s a feeling she’s learning to associate with Zelda, a fear of failure so monumentally departed from that which she knew under Satan’s putative supremacy. Because this matters. She matters. “Only if you desire it to be so.”

“I do,” Zelda chokes.

They stand amidst a static blizzard, foreheads pressed together, minds mingling in the space between heartbeats.

Zelda’s chest constricts, pulled tight by the second soul nesting there. She feels it stretch, roots questing for a hold around her lungs. It spreads like the fire to her blood’s gasoline, but the flame is sweet as sugar under her skin, and it sings through the marrow of her bones with all the splendor of a nightingale.

Lilith steadies her lover’s infernal tremors, bracing Zelda’s shuddering frame against her stable one. Once the quaking dwindles, she combs her fingers through rosy ringlets, coaxing the witch back to herself. Zelda looks up into explosive periwinkle, the first of spring’s flowers as Hell thaws.

“Never bow to me again.” Lilith’s exhale skims Zelda’s temple. “We are one. I will lead our people here, and you will lead them on Earth. As equals.”

There are no stars in the Gehenna, but the sunburst from their kiss feels bright enough to light the Pit for centuries.

 

 

Time passes differently in the Pit, and when Zelda returns, spring has arrived in Greendale.

Radishes and herbs overrun Hilda’s garden. A wealth of florals form new murals around the Spellman Mortuary greet the Queen of Hell and her High Priestess in their crunching gravel approach.

They hear music from the woods beyond. A harp converses with a violin, traipsing through humid air to spin a piano and flute into superb dizziness. The pair follows the melodies into the trees. A candlelit festival welcomes them. Vibrant garlands suspended from branches waft in mesmerizing synchronous as the coven dances barefoot, encircling the band.

The fiddler twirls, carried by the rhythm and tune, and it’s Ambrose, his smile more joyous than Zelda has seen in all the time her nephew has shared her roof. It gleams in concert with his dark eyes when he spots Zelda at the circles’ edge. Her hearts swell.

Hilda is at the true center of everything,—Rosalind, Theo, and Harvey too, though she won’t spoil the mood with questions about that—flanked by twin cribs containing twin babes. After a grateful kiss to her sister’s peach cheek and nods to their mortal guests, Zelda tackles her tears, wrestling them down and gathering up a child in each arm. Leticia gurgles cheerily and her brother blinks with orbs of coal.

I see you’re well cared for, Lilith’s voice proclaims inside her head. It’s time I take my leave of you.

She senses Zelda’s immediate dissent and soothes her as best she can. Don’t fret, dearest, I will return.

Her response is fearless and achingly tender. You’d better.

Precious Letty calls her attention, cooing in her arms, and when Zelda turns back to her lover, Lilith is gone.

 

 

The coven founds their temple around the baptismal altar in the Greendale Wood.

It’s not so much built as it is marked, ringed in white toadstools that grew overnight once Zelda declared the plot of forest the site of revelation. Thick pine needles knit into its ceiling, the trees are its walls, and wildflowers dress it with color and life. Pews are an assortment of mismatched furniture, excess from the Spellman’s attic and the Academy. This place has meant so much to her family and what is this congregation if not an extension of that?

Zelda is lonely without Lilith by her side or in her bed, but she has her students, her Night Children, and her manuscript to finish. Ambrose has reclaimed his domain, so she sits on the earthen floor of Lilith’s empty church each day and marshals her creation. The Seamstress—whose garments she models with pride—sends her unannounced, unexplained additions to her wardrobe every week.

Evidently, Zelda is quite the muse.

If she weren’t already indebted to her, the Seamstress sends stories too. Lilith’s stories, the ones undocumented in the books of men. Hell may not have had a library, but unofficial historians come in many magnificent shapes, sizes, and species.

Mary Wardwell visits often, meek and mild. She bakes with Hilda or reads in Zelda’s study. At first, she was put out by the mortal, but Hilda convinces her they owe her some catharsis after all the poor woman’s been through.

She’s sharp, Zelda will give her that, both intellectually and personally. She knows those eyes painfully well, but she’s beginning to see that Lilith wasn’t the one who place that gunmetal perseverance behind them. Mary Wardwell has seen things and continues to see right through each glamor and excuse the Spellman sisters extend to her.

The number of mortals aware of magic leaves Zelda’s head spinning. Only five so far, but it’s only a matter of time before someone slips up and exposes them. Somehow, it’s almost a comfort. Life out of the shadows doesn’t scare her nearly as much anymore. Maybe it’s less frightening nowadays, or maybe she’s grown more brave.

Or maybe it’s a bit of both.

 

 

Trials are no pleasantry spared to treasonists. The sky screams for a sacrifice, and Lilith stands before throngs of her subjects, her would-be rival wrangled helpless from his cell.

“Kneel, Asmodeus!” Her obsidian sword reflects hellfire, a reaper’s black icicle at the demon’s throat. “What say you now of my Priestess?” she bellows, “I care not for the height of your birth; Your aristocracy is rubble, and you will kiss the very earth my prophet walks upon or burn in eternal, savage damnation. I will scorch your name from our history if I hear so much as another harsh word from your unworthy tongue.”

“You are a more brutal tyrant than our Dark Lord ever was.” The creature gnashes his teeth. “And a lesser being a hundred times over, woman. You will never rule like him.”

“Certainly not.” A swift slash and blood pools under toes that are no longer human. “I was most merciful today. You were warned.”

She turns then to the legions of unholy onlookers, their claws and fangs hanging still in the silence, frozen this time of their own volition.

“And all of you should consider yourselves so,” she announces, spewing venom. “You owe your devotions to the Spellman witch now, my prophet and High Unholy Priestess of my church. She is as much your queen as I. Anyone that defames or, hell-forbid, defies her, will answer to my blade.”

The huddled masses reply only with the rustle of leathery wings and low murmurs of awe and terror. They are the sinners, the vices, the stains of heaven and earth. There’s nothing that stirs them like an execution.

“Now, children of the Pit” Lilith summons Zelda into her mind’s eye, wrapped in the clearest night, draped in bloodied rubies. “Bow!”

The command echoes across the blazing wasteland of Hell, and the rumble of demonic knees cracking on volcanic, charcoal ground is like thunder in the distance. Exultant lightning turns Zelda’s eyes to striking silver, and they stand together in the eye of a hurricane, the beating heart of their perfect storm.

And the rain is both the beginning and the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big love to **everyone** who read this. (Yes, you!) Would not and could not do this without you kind, beautiful people.
> 
> Parts two, three, and four are forthcoming. As I said earlier, they’ll be on the same timeline from different points of view. Honestly, they’re my character studies for pretty much everybody in CAOS, however all of them will involved Zelda/Lilith in some way because I’m Madam Spellman trash. The general plots and themes are set up already, but I’d love to hear your character musings/headcanons/prompts/etc. if you’d like to share or see me try to incorporate them. (Please!)
> 
> I’ll be updating in chronological order and more often now that I’m free of school for the summer. So prepare yourself for unreasonable influxes of my brain mush. 😉 
> 
> Drink your comfort beverage, sit in the sunshine, and enjoy your groove until we meet again.  
> Thank you for coming to my Awkward Sapphic Ted Talk and goodnight! ❤  
> Love, Ruby


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